Nik Software No Longer Supported, Now What? – Edited

I’ve been hearing a lot of this lately…. Google has announced they will no longer support the Nik Suite! What am I going to do? What software is there that will replace this? How will I do this or how will I do that? HOW WILL I SURVIVE WITHOUT NIK SILVER EFEX!!!???

Okay, look, I too was disappointed with the announcement for a minute. Did it ruin my day? No. Will it affect my photography? No. Will my images suffer? No. If you think the loss of Nik software will affect your images, take a deep breath, breathe…. Maybe, this will force you to finally learn about Luminosity Making and use it! It is awesome! Maybe you’ll find an even better way to convert your b&w images! Maybe there is an even better tool than Tonal Contrast. Maybe, you will start to focus more on your vision, composition and image capture than your processing. And maybe, just maybe, your work will get better without Nik. EDIT – November 2017 – Of course we now know Dxo has purchased the Nik Suite so all who love this software are rejoicing!

All sarcasm aside, please don’t use the loss of software as an excuse. Rather, embrace the opportunity to learn something new. Dig out the software package you purchased, but, never really explored because you loved Nik so much. MacPhun has Luminar and just released its beta version for Windows Users. Topaz has a plethora of tools including their new Studio product. Alien Skin has Exposure X2 and On1 has Photo Raw. Each of them have wonderful tools that will help you craft your images. I used to use Silver Efex exclusively for my b&w work. After learning how Chuck Kimmerle and Cole Thompson process their work, I now use Lightroom and then go into Photoshop where I use selections along with dodging and burning techniques. I like the b&w work I am producing now better than when I was using Silver Efex Pro. I used to use Tonal Contrast from Nik a lot. It was my goto tool. Now I use Topaz Clarity or Topaz Detail 3 and am totally satisfied with the results I’m getting. Embrace the opportunity!

We’ll put John. As I recall the words that someone(you know who I mean, lol) once said, in reply to having a lot of PS filters- more tools in your toolbox is a good thing. Maybe it’s time we utilized some of the ones we’ve neglected. Nik had become such a standard go to, that it was just easier for the workflow time.
Now let’s see what our how our artistic view developed, as we explore some of our other possibilities.

What am I missing? I’m assuming we’ll still be able to use Nik Collection regardless of whether it’s still being supported. I still use Picasa. I’m just as glad when they stop “improving” a program. Half the time, the “improvements” make it less enjoyable to use.

Thanks for the update and encouragement, John.
I got the most out of Nik and Topaz when you were doing the tutorials. Might you be doing some with the other software you mention? I find working with a coach much easier than on my own.

Although Google isn’t supporting NIK, it may continue to be available for many years, at least on Windows machines. It works for Windows 10 which is a relatively new release and will probably continue to work for Windows 10 updates. It may even work for whatever follows 10. It is less certain whether it will continue to work as a plug-in for LR and PS, but there really isn’t any advantage to Adobe to break it. That said, I completely agree there are many alternatives as John suggested.